Local vets recall Pearl Harbor reactions

ROCKFORD — Allen Pang awoke unconcerned to the sounds of artillery blasts, bombs and Japanese fighters buzzing the skies over Honolulu.

ROCKFORD — Allen Pang awoke unconcerned to the sounds of artillery blasts, bombs and Japanese fighters buzzing the skies over Honolulu.

It seemed to Pang like any other Sunday morning 70 years ago today on the island of Oahu in what was then the territory of Hawaii.

Sundays were when the U.S. Army 64th Coast Artillery Unit in Pearl Harbor usually fired its big guns for practice, flexing its muscle in an idyllic paradise located a world away from war already raging in Europe.

A retired pediatric dentist who has lived in Rockford with his wife, Kay, for more than 60 years, Pang would later realize this was the day that not only changed his life — one in which he thought he was destined to become a pineapple and sugarcane farmer — but also changed the course of world history.

It was Dec. 7, 1941, and it was soon clear this was no ordinary Sunday.

Day of infamy
In a shrewd and yet disastrous attack on the United States, a 33-ship Japanese strike force steamed to within 200 miles of Oahu under the cover of night.

The Japanese ships launched 360 warplanes that attacked America’s Pacific fleet and ground troops stationed in Hawaii. The Japanese badly damaged or sank 18 U.S. ships, destroyed nearly 200 planes and killed 2,390 Americans. Many more Americans were injured.

Despite tension with Japan, the attack shocked the American public, said Rock Valley College professor and U.S. historian Martin Quirk.

The United States had for three years managed to avoid entering the war that had embroiled Eastern Europe and Germany. To have an attack on Americans come in the Pacific was an unexpected jolt, Quirk said.

In hindsight Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor appears to have been a blunder of historic proportions.

“But if they were going to go down this road with the U.S., (attacking Pearl Harbor) offered them the best chance at success,” Quirk said. “Given the path they were trying to embark upon, it offered the best military option available. If they would have wiped out the fleet at Pearl Harbor, if the blow had been great enough.”

The Japanese strike force turned back, not knowing where the rest of the American fleet was. It had badly damaged the fleet in the Pacific. But Japan not only dragged the U.S. into war, it had incensed the American people.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt sought a declaration of war from Congress, calling the day of the Pearl Harbor attack “a date which will live in infamy.”

No drill
In Honolulu, the Pang household was coming to life as the Japanese bombs fell.

Pang was a 20-year-old. He was a second-year agriculture student at the University of Hawaii where enrollment in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps was a requirement.

Pang was sleeping a little late after a night celebrating: Hawaii, as Pang recalls, had just won a football game against a mainland university — quite an accomplishment at the time.

On an island that can be lapped in hours, there were no dormitories for university students in those days, Pang said. He still lived at home with his parents on School Street, roughly 7 miles from Hickam Field, the military airfield adjacent to Pearl Harbor.

Someone turned on the radio — there were no televisions back then — and the announcer repeated over and over that this was a real attack and the military maneuvers were no drill.

Japanese fighters flew overhead to bomb and strafe American warships and coastal military installations. They were so close, Pang could see the red Japanese insignia on the planes.

“We didn’t realize how serious it was, and then we could see the planes flying over and you could see the red dots on them,” Pang said. “They were divebombing.”

Call to arms
Two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Rockford native and East High School graduate Bob Carlson marched down to Camp Grant and signed papers to enlist in the U.S. Air Force.

When news first broke about the attack, he didn’t even know where Pearl Harbor was. All he knew was that Americans had been attacked he wanted to do something about it.

“I had to do it,” Carlson said. “I didn’t like the idea we were being attacked. By the time I enlisted I learned more and knew where Pearl Harbor was and what they had done.”

Carlson went on to become a B-17 pilot, but never flew in combat.

Rockford resident Bill O’Donnell, 85, was just 15 years old during the attack on Pearl Harbor. But despite his youth, he was eager to enlist.

A generation humbled by the Great Depression learned to keep its sense of humor, O’Donnell said. A sense of patriotism and duty compelled young people to swamp enlistment offices. Some offices, O’Donnell said, ran out of enlistment applications.

But O’Donnell was forced to wait until he was 17 to join the U.S. Navy. Even then he weighed in at a scrawny 129 pounds.

“They almost didn’t take me,” O’Donnell said. “All of us kids were pretty patriotic at the time. As soon as I could, I got my parents’ permission to enlist.”

Enlisted that day
There was no wait for Pang.

As ships smoldered in Pearl Harbor, schools were closed in case they were needed as emergency barracks or hospitals for the Army, Pang said.

Pang and his fellow ROTC students were asked over the radio to gather at the university. They volunteered to serve, enlisting in the Hawaii Territorial Guard. Pang thinks of it as the island’s version of the U.S. Coast Guard at the time.

Although the new recruits knew nothing of combat, Pang said, a rifle was slapped in his hands and he was assigned to guard duty.

“We were so green we hardly knew what the heck the end of a rifle was like,” Pang said.
Pang’s enlistment record indicates that he “served under fire during Japanese attack on the island of Oahu.”

Pang, who may be the last Pearl Harbor survivor still living in the Rock River Valley, insists it isn’t true.
But if Pang didn’t serve under fire then, it wasn’t long until he was tested in battle.

From Honolulu to Germany
After an uneventful year on guard duty in Honolulu following the attack at Pearl Harbor, Pang enlisted in air combat school with the U.S. Air Corps.

A bombardier/navigator with the 17th Bombardment Group and 432nd Bombardment Squadron, Lt. Pang went on to participate in 68 combat missions primarily in B-26 Marauders over Italy, France and Germany between May 11, 1944, and March 15, 1945, according to his military record. Many of the missions lasted more than five hours. Combined, they totaled more than 271 operational hours.

He earned at least eight Air Medals. One was for “meritorious achievement” as bombardier during an attack on a vital highway at Capistrello, Italy, on May 26, 1944. His unit earned the Croix de Guerre from the French Air Force, the European African Middle Eastern Service Medal, the Asiatic-Pacific Service Medal and Distinguished Unit Citation.

The last thing he wants is to be made out to be some kind of hero.

“A lot of other guys did a lot of work like that, too,” Pang said.

Staff writer Jeff Kolkey can be reached at jkolkey@rrstar.com or at 815-987-1374.